[linux-packaging] First time making a Debian package

[Pierre Abbat]

I'm going to package PerfectTIN; for practice, I'm packaging a simpler 
program, called Mirasol, which is also on my GitHub site but is not 
geospatial. PerfectTIN has a build dependency on pandoc which is not a run 
dependency, and it uses a library which I'm also going to package. Bezitopo 
has an optional dependency on FFTW; I have FFTW installed but should package 
it without it. Mirasol has none of these problems.

I copied the tarball to ~/package/, untarred it, renamed the directory, and 
tried building the package. I think the debian folder inside the folder was 
the result of running something recommended on Launchpad, which turned out not 
to work. I ran "debuild -us -uc" and got a package, which Angelos said looks 
good, but this is my first time building a Debian package, and I don't know how 
to tell if I'm doing it right. Lintian gave a bunch of errors and warnings:

Now running lintian mirasol_0.1.0-1_amd64.changes ...
E: mirasol source: readme-source-is-dh_make-template
W: mirasol source: dh-make-template-in-source debian/manpage.1.ex
W: mirasol source: dh-make-template-in-source debian/manpage.sgml.ex
W: mirasol source: dh-make-template-in-source debian/manpage.xml.ex
W: mirasol source: dh-make-template-in-source debian/menu.ex
W: mirasol source: dh-make-template-in-source debian/mirasol.cron.d.ex
W: mirasol source: dh-make-template-in-source debian/mirasol.doc-base.EX
W: mirasol source: dh-make-template-in-source debian/postinst.ex
W: mirasol source: dh-make-template-in-source debian/postrm.ex
W: mirasol source: dh-make-template-in-source debian/preinst.ex
W: mirasol source: dh-make-template-in-source debian/prerm.ex
W: mirasol source: dh-make-template-in-source debian/watch.ex
W: mirasol source: missing-license-paragraph-in-dep5-copyright gpl-3+ 
(paragraph at line 5)
E: mirasol source: debian-rules-is-dh_make-template
W: mirasol: new-package-should-close-itp-bug
W: mirasol: readme-debian-contains-debmake-template
E: mirasol: section-is-dh_make-template
W: mirasol: extended-description-line-too-long
W: mirasol: binary-without-manpage usr/bin/mirasol
Finished running lintian.

Most of the warnings are clear (I should just delete the .ex files), but I 
don't know what an innocent third party bug is, and I don't know what to do 
about the errors.

Pierre
-- 
li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa